The Trading Game

It develops realistic and co-operative approaches to partnership negotiations by:

NB: Do not point out to the groups that they are receiving different sets of materials – they will notice soon enough.

The Grade A groups will begin making shapes as soon as they have all the materials and equipment, but they will soon run short of raw materials and probably try to buy some paper from other groups. At first the groups with paper will probably sell it for a very low price: note how the ‘terms of trade’ change during the game and point this out later. You will be the only person who can see how the game is developing as a whole: the players will be engrossed in their own group so it is important for you to note the types of alliances and deals which develop and bring these into the discussion at the end.

After a while, change the value of some of the shapes, so that, for example, rich groups find that their compasses are no longer as useful as they were for making valuable shapes. Remember to tell the banker of any price changes.

For your own secret supply of extra paper you can ‘feed’ an extra supply to one of the groups and announce to the world (i.e. all the groups) that a new deposit of raw material has been discovered in this group. If this is done late in the game when everyone is running short of paper, it will quickly change relationships between the groups. You could also add a few pieces of different colored paper: this could be used to represent the discovery of a new low-grade or high-grade resource and the shapes from this paper could be valued accordingly.

Two groups will have a pad of post-its. They are not told anything about it and may not even notice that they have them: its real life parallel is a resource of which a country does not know the true value. You can give them a value secretly telling two other groups (by discreet written messages) that if they attach one post-it to their products they will be worth four times the original value. (Tell the banker). These groups will then start to search for the post-its. As the holders don’t know its value they may well sell it cheaply and the first group will make a profit. Alternatively, they might hold on to their resource until the end of the game and never let it be used, in which case its potential is never realized.

During the game you could encourage one or two groups by granting them UN aid on certain conditions: e.g. that a third of the goods produced with the aid should be paid back to the UN as interest. The aid could be given in the form of technology (e.g. extra scissors to one group for a short term only). Look out for examples of richer groups offering aid to poorer groups: what were the terms of the deal? In fact, this is unlikely to happen unless the leader encourages it. Groups tend to be very reluctant to help others!

Trade Associations may develop during the game: two or more groups may agree to co-operate for their mutual benefit. Notice the degree of co-operation that takes place between countries. Is it full union, or sharing of technology or materials, or joint marketing?

A powerful group offers ‘protection’ to another group or offers to absorb it, promising that its rights and assets will be respected.

Some groups may place restrictions or charges on trading with other groups.

The groups with the most paper might decide to join together to protect themselves from being individually exploited by Grade A countries.

Groups with large supplies of paper could stop trading or reduce their amount of trade. By withholding supplies of paper, they may be able to improve the terms of trade for themselves and conserve stocks for the future. However, this would be risky without the protection of a cartel.

The game leader can halt production by declaring a temporary general strike. He should remove the scissors from Grade A group for a few minutes so that production has to stop.

These developments will probably not happen unless the leader introduces them. It is not necessary to try all 6 within the game, but they are all situations which might well develop and they will provoke discussion at the end of the game. One of the advantages of this game is that it is very open-ended: all kinds of alliances will emerge and then can be broken and inevitably one of the players will ask whether s/he can ‘cheat’.